One of the most frustrating things about marketing is when we develop something that works really well for a business to get potential customers only for the employees to screw it all up. Remember this: No one cares about your business the way you, the business owner does. You need to make sure your employees are ambassadors of your business, not losers that prevent sales. This example of employee sabotage comes from a trade show I was at a few years ago. The picture doesn’t show it very well but notice the employees sitting propped up against the display, dipping tobacco while a customer asks them questions. If I were the business owner here, I’d fire these guys on the spot. They cost the business a lead and sabotaged the brand image. I watched these guys all weekend as they did nothing for the business. Now the $15,000 booth this guy paid for was wasted. Such a shame. Know what’s going on in your business. Secret shop it. Don’t let employees screw it all up for you. If they do, fire them and make an example for others. If they are not on board with you, then they are costing you sales!

A lot of businesses think that it’s the specific media’s fault for their ad or marketing piece for not getting the results they want. Although I agree that not every media is right for every business, it’s often not the media that’s causing the bad results. Instead, it’s often the marketing message sent through the media. Most businesses are poorly advised to do branding with their ads by ad reps or agencies. It’s what I call a “business card style” advertisement with just their name, rank and serial number. You know, here’s our pretty logo, a large graphic, our bulleted list of services and our contact information.

The problem with this type of marketing message is that it does nothing to actually convince someone to buy from you right now. There is no offer, call to action, incentive or reasons to buy from your company. There’s nothing to position or set your business a part from the competition. It also does nothing to get into the mind and emotions of a prospective customer. If you want big results with your marketing and advertising, you need to think differently. I advise my clients to think about their marketing this way: With any kind of advertising that you do, no matter whether it’s T.V., radio, direct mail, internet marketing or whatever, you must think of it like the message a salesman would say to a prospective customer. The information you put in your advertisements is the only information your prospective customers will see in your ads, therefore that’s all of the information that you are arming your salesman with. If all the information you provided to a salesman for prospective buyers was your name and contact information, how successful would THAT sales presentation be? They would quickly go broke, be poor and starving.

So what you need to do is arm your salesman with as many tools and tactics as you can to help them to sell a prospective buyer. It takes a whole lot more than just a list of services, a logo and your contact information to convince someone to make a purchase from you. So with every kind of marketing or advertisement that you do, think of them like your “salesman.” Ask yourself, if I were to give the information in my ads to a salesman to sell with would it be enough to get a purchase from a customer?